Medical-pot moratorium sought in Billerica

BILLERICA -- While officials agree that a medical-marijuana facility is probably not coming to town, they still want to take every possible precaution.

As a result, the Planning Board is doing what most other planning boards are doing -- trying to buy time by placing an article on the spring Town Meeting warrant that would set a temporary moratorium on medical-marijuana treatment centers in Billerica.

The moratorium, which several area towns also placed on their Town Meeting warrants, would not allow "for the use of land or structures for purposes of cultivation, distribution, possession and use of marijuana for medical purposes and/or the operation of a medical-marijuana treatment center" until June 30, 2014, unless repealed earlier by Town Meeting.

"Like many other towns, we need time to digest the state regulations," said D. Anthony Fields, Billerica's director of planning. "If a medical-marijuana facility came here, we would need more time to discuss where people are comfortable with them in town.

"Cities like Lowell and Cambridge will be more targeted in Middlesex County, so the likelihood is slim for a town like Billerica, but we still need to be prepared," Fields added.

In November, Massachusetts voters approved a ballot referendum that legalized marijuana for medical use. The legislation allows for five medical-marijuana dispensaries to be placed in each county.

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Despite officials thinking that Lowell, Cambridge and larger municipalities will eventually house the five facilities in Middlesex County, Selectman Andrew Deslauriers said Billerica still needs time to think about the regulations.

"I doubt it's at the top of the list for development in town, but with the laws coming so rapidly, we need a moratorium to give us some breathing room," Deslauriers said. "We need time to look into the issue and figure out the zoning."

Nobody opposed a medical-marijuana moratorium at the Planning Board's public hearing on April 16, and nobody has come forward to open a dispensary in town, Fields said.

Billerica, like other towns, will need to discuss whether it will only allow the facilities in a specific part of town and how far the facilities should be from schools and social gathering places, he said.

"It's one of those things where patients should have easy access to it, but how many people are comfortable with it in the strip mall in the center of town?" Fields asked. "But is it really fair to patients if it's on the outskirts of town?

"And if it's in the outskirts of town, then it would be much harder for our public-safety personnel to monitor it," he added.

Billerica police Lt. Roy Frost said a medical-marijuana dispensary would put stress on the department from a security point of view.

"Because marijuana is such a high-priced black market drug, if you're growing it in a particular place and people know it's going to be there, you run into all these issues from overnight burglaries to robberies to juvenil e access," Frost said. "So it would definitely be a big impact on us."

Many area towns placed a medical-marijuana moratorium article on their Town Meeting warrants, including Chelmsford, Westford, Tewksbury, Wilmington, Dracut and Littleton.

On March 13, Attorney General Martha Coakley approved a bylaw imposing a temporary moratorium on marijuana treatment centers in Burlington.

"The temporary moratorium is consistent with the town's authority to impose reasonable time limitations on development while it conducts planning studies and considers the implication of state Department of Public Health regulations concerning such centers, which are expected to be issued in May 2013," according to Coakley's written decision.

On the same day that Burlington's moratorium was approved, Coakley ruled that towns cannot enact a total ban on medical-marijuana centers; Wakefield tried to prohibit future facilities from opening in town. However, the ruling stated that towns can enact zoning regulations for the facilities.

The annual spring Town Meeting starts at 7:30 p.m. on May 7 at Billerica Town Hall auditorium.

If the moratorium gets approved, then zoning regulations would be figured out over the next year, Fields said.

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